“At 13:57 local time, a low yield nuclear warhead exploded in the city of Chongjin, North Korea.A long standing military target. Chongjin is home to some 532,000 men, women, and children.This city has survived a number of wars. It will not survive this.But her people will.As 13:57 and .00001 microseconds, half a million Koreans seemed to materialize on a hilltop 35 miles away from the blast.They were carried there . . . One at a time, sometimes two . . . At a hair's breadth short of the speed of light . . . By one man . . .The Flash. The Fastest Man Alive.”

“The monstrous effects on Korean civilians of the methods of warfare adopted by the United Nations — the blanket fire bombing of North Korean cities, the destruction of dams and the resulting devastation of the food supply and an unremitting aerial bombardment more intensive than anything experienced during the Second World War. At one point the Americans gave up bombing targets in the North when their intelligence reported that there were no more buildings over one story high left standing in the entire country … the overall death toll was staggering: possibly as many as four million people. About three million were civilians (one out of every ten Koreans). Even to a world that had just begun to recover from the vast devastation of the Second World War, Korea was a man-made hell with a place among the most violent excesses of the 20th century.”

“And I'm a little mean to people who are dumb. And most people are dumb.”

“Sometimes, the things They say, the laws They make, the way the world spins doesn't make any sense at all...Which is exactly why you have to ask "Why?" and keep on asking until you get the TRUTH...”

“I can see the stars in your eyes from a mile away. They guide me to you just like the North Star.” Then he bent his head and kissed her – a long, sweet kiss under moonbeams that caressed them both lovingly.”

“A friendship between a man and a woman was what you called it when one had been pursuing the other for a long time and never gotten anywhere.”

“Isobel looked down at her lap, at her hands. She turned her left one over, remembering where Varen had written his number on her that first time. Those numbers were gone now, but in hindsight, he may as well have tattooed the moment onto her soul.”